How to extricate the girl from her grave position? Lanceor's good looks have been spoiled by his illness--a mere trifle for this insatiable creature. In the last act Merlin lies sleeping, Arielle on guard. Joyzelle approaches, her face set in despair, yet firm in her purpose to fulfil her destiny. She has promised. Lanceor has been saved. She will pay. As she reaches the couch of the magician she plucks forth a dagger and would have bloody murder. This is the supreme test--rather a disquieting doctrine to the passivists and gentle persons who feed on Maeterlinck's balmy philosophies. Love that does not flinch at crime is the keystone to this little arch of a play. Merlin is satisfied. Joyzelle has undergone his tests. She is the perfect woman for Lanceor's perfect love. The two are united, and the lovely landscape fades from our view like the misty pictures in a Chopin Ballade. Ideal love is the motive of this new play, love that will march to the jaws of hell, if needs be, for the beloved one; Orpheus and Eurydice, Hero and Leander, or any other enamoured couple come to your memory as the ingenuous Joyzelle, who has not a faint trace of humour in her, proceeds gravely to the unpleasant tasks set her by Merlin. I could not help recalling that Princess Istar,--set to music by d'Indy,--who goes down into Hades and at each of its seven gates casts away a part of her belongings. At the seventh and last gate she has remaining only her nakedness. Maeterlinck removes leaf after leaf from the flower-like soul of Joyzelle until its very core is reached. While she bears a sisterly resemblance to many of his narve infantile women, she is nearer related to Monna Vanna in her affirmative nature. She is very full-blooded for a dream maiden, and at times she showed something of Sardou's tigress-like creatures. Possibly one received this impression because Georgette Leblanc, who originated the title rôle, has evidently been a close student of Sarah Bernhardt's methods. As is the case with modern _féministe_ writers--were there ever ancient ones?--the woman is enthroned, she is the Eternal Womanly, and she has the final word in the destiny of things, as in Goethe's poem. Lanceor does not appear in an undesirable light, while Merlin represents Wisdom and makes very Maeterlinckian speeches. His final words are full of the sober dignity we expect from the author of Wisdom and Destiny. In Joyzelle the words count for something, no matter what the author intends them to convey by the "second intention." He once wrote "Les hommes out je ne sais quelle peur étrange de la beauté." This strange fear the young Belgian Merlin evokes of his own accord. We sense the beauty, but are uncomfortable in its presence. Human beings or semi-humans must act to reveal themselves. This they do in Joyzelle. There can be no reproach here of the abuse of the "static," only the action and words--couched in harmonious prose--do not quite summon reality to us.